@Ice_Cap is too kind to come right out and say it, but yes, the Montreal-Toronto dynamic IS special and unlike anything that we have in the US. Canada is not a very populous country (number 39 in my program, number 2 in my heart), and there’s a lot of elbow room. Almost a quarter of the population lives in those two metro areas. The Montreal-Toronto duopoly and the fact that they represent fundamentally different populations that have been in a frequently-awkward union for hundreds of years is quite simply something that we don’t have in the US. Rivalries aren’t guaranteed by city affiliations, but they can juice the odds. Yankees-Red Sox is an all-timer, but Patriots-Jets not so much. However, that Patriots-Jets game probably still means more to those fans than a game against another random bad team, like Bills-Jets or Bills-Patriots.

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I don't know if Patriots-Jets is an all-timer, but it's something with the way Belichick and Parcells weave through both of them. I don't think there was ever much to it before then because the Patriots' only rivalry had been with its own obsolescence.

There are lots of city rivalries that in the grand scheme don't mean anything. Montreal and Toronto is not among them at all.

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There's a reason Canadiens fans would rather cheer for the Bruins, a team they utterly despise, over the Leafs if the Canadiens aren't an option during playoff time; Montréal and Toronto have the oldest and most storied rivalry in the NHL, which is one of the oldest rivalries in all of sports. It definitely bleeds over into other sports, too; the Toronto FC and Montréal Impact, for example, have a spirited rivalry. Even the cities themselves have been rivals for much of their existence, stemming from how they represent both sides of Canada.

The two are the San Francisco and Los Angeles of Canada, in my opinion; mostly friendly to each other, but mortal enemies when it comes to sports. If the Expos ever return in the same division as the Jays, you will see the Jays be one of their most heated rivals, because Montreal and Toronto cannot stand each other when it comes to sports; never have and never will.

A Montréal fan cheering for a Toronto team is like a Oilers fan cheering for the Flames. It'll never happen.

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I don't know if Patriots-Jets is an all-timer, but it's something with the way Belichick and Parcells weave through both of them. I don't think there was ever much to it before then because the Patriots' only rivalry had been with its own obsolescence﻿.

As far as Boston-NY rivalries go, I think Patriots-Giants is a bigger rivalry than Patriots-Jets. Despite not even being in the same conference.

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I don't know if Patriots-Jets is an all-timer, but it's something with the way Belichick and Parcells weave through both of them. I don't think there was ever much to it before then be﻿cause the Patriots' only rivalry had been with its own obsolescence.

There are lots of city rivalries that in the grand scheme don't mean anything. Montreal and Toronto is not among them at all.

Are there any American sports rivalries where the rivalry between cities does matter? Boston and NY aren't "rivals", because they're not competing for attention or to be the cultural or economic center. It's just sports. Boston could have a rivalry with Philadelphia, but to my knowledge doesn't. I don't see any way in which St. Louis and Chicago are rivals outside the context of sports. Maybe NY has one with LA over being the entertainment or media capital of the country? Maybe the CA cities do? DAL/HOU? IDK.

I don't see any American rivalries that would be based on anything as deep as what the TOR/MTL one is.

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Well, Chicago overtook St. Louis as the preeminent midwestern city by re-engineering a river to send its sewage down there. That must count for something.

Said sewage eventually manifested itself in the form of hypersensitive Cardinals fans and people who think that Provel (a Milwaukee creation, I apologize on behalf of my former residence) is the perfect cheese topping.

But back to the point at hand, MTL-TOR matters in a way that few rivalries do in the rest of North America. I guess you could argue that New York-Brooklyn used to be this (especially since the Giants played in Manhattan), but that's getting into some civic stuff that I don't know very much about.

I would argue that SF Bay Area-LA only really matters for the Giants/Dodgers and the Sharks/Kings/Ducks. The Rams/49ers and the Lakers/Warriors have rarely been good at the same time. I guess Warriors/Clippers is a recent rivalry (one that will end once one team falls out of contention). Angels/A's should be a rivalry, but they've rarely had big series against each other and both teams seem more focused on their NL rivals than their geographic ones.

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Do the Rays cost MLB money? I assume they don't contribute much to the revenue-sharing pool, but is there really a cost benefit for MLB to move them? They can't be losing money, or costing MLB, right?

Where I'm going is that if Montreal is serious about having a team again, then MLB could be costing themselves $500M in expansion fees by moving a team there rather than expanding. That's another reason why the two-city thing seems like the worst option from an MLB standpoint. If the Rays were to flat-out move, then MLB could try to extract a large relocation fee to make up for the lost expansion fee. But the half-season thing doesn't seem to benefit anyone.

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That's another reason why the two-city thing seems like the worst option from an MLB standpoint. If the Rays were to flat-out move, then MLB could try to extract a large relocation fee to make up for the lost expansion fee. But the half-season thing doesn't seem to benefit anyone.

Are relocation fees a thing? This is the first I've ever heard of such a thing...

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Are there any American sports rivalries where the rivalry between cities does matter? Boston and NY aren't "rivals", because they're not competing for attention or to be the cultural or economic center. It's just sports. Boston could have a rivalry with Philadelphia, but to my knowledge doesn't. I don't see any way in which St. Louis and Chicago are rivals outside the context of sports. Maybe NY has one with LA over being the entertainment or media capital of the country? Maybe the CA cities do? DAL/HOU? IDK.

I don't see any American rivalries that would be based on anything as deep as what the TOR/MTL one is.

Back off topic: I'd contend that there's a legitimate rivalry between SF and LA that goes beyond sports. They're stuck, by an accident of history, in the same state, competing for the same resources and tax dollars, and historically, competing over being the West Coast's preeminent city. (It was SF from the time of the gold rush until probably the rise of the movie industry in Hollywood, shifted down to LA with the concentration of the entertainment industry there, and is probably right now in the process of shifting more toward SF due to the tech boom, and the movie/music industries being less concentrated in LA.) There's a whole urban versus suburban, tech versus entertainment, hipsters versus trendy people, etc., thing going on there, that I think stretches beyond sports.

Boston versus New York? There's definitely some rivalry there outside of sports, though it's primarily a sports-fueled rivalry. But there's a palpable difference in attitudes between the two cities, with each one having a strange mix of admiration and disdain for the other. Growing up in Connecticut (and well within the Tri-State area), there was definitely a little identity crisis in our neck of the woods between wanting to be stereotypical quaint New England towns, and touting our great access to the nation's biggest metropolis. So I think that plays into the Boston/New York thing a little, but it's mostly a sports thing (give truth serum to most New Yorkers and they'll tell you they secretly love going to Boston... and vice versa).

Neither of these top Toronto/Montreal though, if for no other reason than there's no gigantic language or cultural difference in our country as there is in Canada.

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NorCal/SoCal lost one of the big fracture points back in the 60s though. Prior to Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims, NorCal used to have control of the State Senate (because seats were divvied out at one Senator per county) and SoCal had the State House (because seats were distributed by population.

And a big reason (of quite a few) it didn't shift farther south to San Diego was because the original transcontinental highway system of 1926 favored Los Angeles over San Diego, which at the time had nothing more than a plank road through the desert. There was a time where there was effectively a competition between LA and SD to see which one would "win" SoCal.